


light a fire, let it burn

by doxies



Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Gambling, M/M, Murder, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-19 09:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11894400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doxies/pseuds/doxies
Summary: contract killers!au with wanna one's legal line.He can feel the ricochet of the bullet, shredding through bone and rib and heart at once. He can see the way the light goes out in his eyes. He can feel the rush of blood, heady in his veins as death sweeps in with its claws and snuffs out a life.It’s not hard at all. It’s exhilarating.





	light a fire, let it burn

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This author does not condone murder, drug use, gambling or suicide. Live responsibly.

 

 

 

“What if there is no moral?” Seongwu asks the sky.

 

But there are no answers, sky stretching bright and blue beyond the horizon, the sun glaring and warm against his skin. And he rams his foot down on the accelerator and feels the Beetle fly.

 

Gravity pauses, earth slipping beneath his feet until all that remains is the ocean and the echoing roar of water into his ears. He sinks into the endless grey, and lets it fill him.

 

***

 

He meets Jisung two months after he finishes college.

 

The man is dressed sharply: a crisp, navy suit and an alligator skin belt, polished oxblood shoes, a pair of stylish glasses perched on top of a prominent nose. There is a smile on his face that belies nothing, a sort of mystery to him even as he speaks in all business tones.

 

“Ong Seongwu,” It’s not a question, but Seongwu nods anyway as Jisung pours him a shot of whiskey. The liquid is warm in his mouth, and he sips quietly, trying not to fidget under Jisung’s scrutinising gaze.

 

Jisung motions his assistant for some papers and a pen, and Seongwu signs with a flourish. There are words written in official-looking serif font, but he knows the contract is a formality at best. There is no going back after this, he figures, and as the ink swirls across the white in spidery script, the date printed in capital below, he wonders if he was signing his life away, or signing into one.

 

(He supposes it never made a difference which)

 

***

 

He meets the others two days after.

 

He has his luggage in hand, a new phone and a set of keys to the apartment Jisung had arranged for him to live in. There are five men living with him, a motley crew. Jisung’s assistant, a small slip of a man named Sungwoon, is quick to warn him of the team’s oddities, but he’s quick to add that they are the best, eyes glinting with warning, as he holds the door open for him in invitation.

 

It’s Woojin he meets first, a compact figure in the dark, head thrown back in a laugh as he leans  into the couch. He thumbs the revolver in his hand, loading and unloading the bullet relentlessly. Minhyun is seated beside him, long-limbed and beautiful, looking every inch the boy toy than a contract killer, a kind of quiet, deadly grace to him even as he furrows his eyebrows at the tiny phone display to candy crush some more. There’s Jihoon too, his face invariably _young_ even as he pulls the cigarette from his lips, white rings of smoke encircling his teeth as he smiles back at him and offers him a fag.

 

These are the three he meets first, and then Jaehwan, as unpredictable as he seems unhinged, laugh high-pitched as he greets Seongwu with the press of a switchblade against his neck, asking him _who the fuck_ he is until Minhyun drags him away, eyes rolling.

 

When Seongwu asks of their last member, Jihoon only gestures vaguely to the basement before he turns away. He finds Daniel there, leaned back on the pool table with an arm poised to hit when Seongwu enters. He’s baby-faced and tall, nondescript but for a shock of blonde hair. There’s a sort of genial smile on his face that seems out of place in the dim, desperate light of the basement.

 

“Hi,” Daniel begins without preamble, a sort of awkward gait about him as he extends a hand, “Ong Seongwu? Welcome to the club.”

 

***

 

Minhyun is their best marksman by far, and one week after Seongwu moves in, he tosses a silenced Glock into Seongwu’s lap and asks him to _shoot._

 

It takes him two weeks to get used to the kickback from the gun reverberating up his arm;  Minhyun’s a great teacher, even if his tongue is acerbic and sharp. But Seongwu’s a fast enough learner, and  Minhyun gestures for him to get in the passenger seat of his shiny new Corvette, speeding off into the night for his next hit.

 

They skid to a stop a ways away from the Han River, windows rolled down for a smoke when Minhyun draws his gun without hesitation. He’s spotted his target, a small, squat woman dressed in a purple dress, holding animated conversation with a bunch of white men. They stand in close proximity to one another - too close he thinks aloud, but Minhyun only smiles, lips curling as he pulls the trigger.

 

“You have much to learn,” Minhyun says. And the woman falls down dead, blood seeping from a single bullet to her skull as she falls, like deadweight, into the murky depths below.

 

Minhyun rolls up the windows again, revving up the engine to go. The night ends in asphalt and twenty bottles of gin, watching as the brand new Corvette burns in the dead of the night until Minhyun offers him a hand and a ride off a stolen Ducati, and he rides pillion all the way back home.

 

 Just like that, they die, and are reborn again.

 

The reality is probably much more complicated than that. They live like ghosts, hidden in smoke and mirrors; their job is to shoot to kill, burn the bodies and burn the cars, and Jisung and Sungwoon do the rest, procuring cars and clients, endless files and folders of names and photos and subjects to kill. The culprits are always placeholder names and identities — they never get caught.

 

Still, Minhyun is notoriously anal about leaving nothing behind, scrubbing down the red from his fingers with a surgeon’s precision after yet another hit. There’s something frenetic about the way he does it, nervous and methodological as he cleans his thumbs, his knuckles, his fingers, his nails and his wrists. This one had been messier than the first: a man in his thirties, corpse slung over Minhyun’s shoulder like a ragdoll, blood and brain matter sliding down onto the backseat of the Alfa Romeo. He learns there that there are no perfect killers, learns how Minhyun hates the blood, sees the guilt in his eyes in the remnants of dead flesh that linger after the deed is done, reminders of his own sin.

 

Seongwu doesn’t put much thought into the man, all the decades of a life reduced into numbers and strings of words on paper. Instead, he remembers the stench of the body, clinging onto his skin, and after that, the way Minhyun had breathed hard above him, body quivering as he pounded into him till they were both spent. He watches the way Minhyun’s eyes shutter, as he empties himself in the moment, hands still shaking, and the quiet way he gathers himself when he’s done at last.

 

“Don’t get too attached,” Minhyun warns, putting on the last of his clothes (freshly laundered ones stolen from the back of Seongwu’s own cupboard). And then Minhyun is gone.

 

They don’t speak of that night, the bloodied corpse just another name on Minhyun’s long list of successful hits. It’s business as usual on Monday, and Minhyun strikes with precision again and again and again. Seongwu watches in silence, learning until he can learn no more.

 

***

 

It’s Sungwoon who passes him his first manila folder. There’s a name and an address, and a brand new gun.

 

“The first one is the hardest,” Sungwoon says, a quiet _good luck_ as he patted him on the shoulder and closed the door.

 

But it’s not hard, not really. The cold metal of the gun digs into his skin like a welcome old friend, heart racing in his chest as he waits. It’s not fear, but anticipation, a kind of sick thrill that flutters in his belly as the target enters his line of sight, drawing close.

 

And he’s close enough, nearly face to face with the boy when he buries the gun his his chest. He can feel the ricochet of the bullet, shredding through bone and rib and heart at once. He can see the way the light goes out in his eyes. He can feel the rush of blood, heady in his veins as death sweeps in with his claws and snuffs out a life.

 

It’s not hard at all. It’s _exhilarating_.

 

***

 

The cars come as part of the lifestyle, equal parts practical as they are ostentatious. The speed is merely aesthetic, numbing and warm at the same time; when it’s fast, it is adrenaline in their veins, clouding the senses. It is death, standing at the precipice, waiting to fall, and sometimes they let go and watch it crash and burn.

  
He gets his first car at Jihoon’s insistence. It’s a tiny black thing, a Volkswagen that looks more like a toy car than a real one. But Seongwu has always valued control, the beetle practical and fuss-free, easy to maneuver for as shitty a driver as Seongwu, fingers gripped tight at the wheel at each turn with just enough traction that he’s not flung off the edge of his seat. The fact that it’s also deceptively pretty is also another plus, and Seongwu rather fancies pretty things.

 

(The rest of the team collectively dubs it the Barbie Car.)

 

Jihoon takes one look at the tiny thing and scoffs, wholly unimpressed at how _fucking slow_ it is; But Jihoon _is_ a speed freak. He’s all about that drift, tyres skidding and giddy as he pushes the limit higher, faster, past the lights, past the ocean and the sea, every turn and every drag, cigarette smoke in his lungs as he presses his lips against Seongwu’s own until they are both heady and breathless, and nearly drives them off the edge of a cliff.

 

“It feels like flying,” Jihoon says, eyes bright, mouth quirking upwards into a half-smile as he pushes Seongwu further into the car seat. Seongwu thinks of the way Jihoon shoots, flashy and angry and violent, a little reckless and out of control, one too many bullets as he watches his victim writhe and beg and cry — and he wonders if Jihoon means the drive or the kill.

 

He supposes it doesn’t really matter in the end; the black beetle is but a squashed bug, a crumpled ball of metal, skin and flesh and bones illuminated against the backdrop of the night sky. All that remains is the heat licking too close to touch and the color red.

 

***

 

His third hit is a man, fifty-three and balding, the kind of unassuming pot-bellied middle-manager that seldom meets a sticky end at the end of a gun (but does anyway). It’s messy, and Woojin helps him with the cleanup, laughing as they set it aflame. His fourth is a young woman, ruby red lips the same color flowing down her chin as she breathes her last. The fifth and sixth fall together, a beautiful boy and a ratty girl, clinging to each other they bleed out; _touching_ , he thinks, but in the end, they’re all just names and faces he won’t remember, another death, another day and then, another dusk and dawn.

 

The details escape him; Seongwu has never asked questions, just kills and kills. It doesn’t take him long to earn Jisung’s favor, the man’s smile wide as he turns in yet another death. Seongwu thinks Jisung prides him for that, for the cold, numb way with which he pulls the trigger, the way he doesn’t get attached. Perhaps he should have cared, but as with all things, Seongwu slips away into the echoes of _numb_.

 

***

 

They are all here for their own reasons, a string of unlikely companions tied together by violence and blood and dollar bills. Woojin and Minhyun had hailed from Jisung’s home town, a juvenile with no future, and a man wanted, looking for a fresh beginnings. Jaehwan had been a singer once, an ace student in the best music college before it came to pieces and Sungwoon had picked him up from the dredges and put him back together, one bullet at a time. Jihoon, he learns, had been a runaway, lifting wallets in crowded buses and trains until Jisung had found him and pressed a gun in his hand and given him purpose.

 

They kill for something; for accomplishment, for entertainment, for necessity or for direction.

 

But Daniel is _different_.

 

On this particular day, there’s an expensive bottle of red wine on the table, two half-empty glasses. Seongwu is a little pink in the face from the alcohol, lips lightly turned up at the sides as he hums to the sound of bossa nova playing on the too-expensive stereo set.  There’s a joint in his hand, and Seongwu inhales the taste of moss on his tongue as he holds his breath and lets it fill him, a heavy scent that tickles the back of his throat until he lets it out again. Daniel sits opposite him on the loveseat, feet lightly tapping against the carpet floor; there’s a light in his eyes when he talks, all animated hands and wide open mouth, full set of teeth showing when he smiles in a way that reminds Seongwu of a large Samoyed puppy.

 

They don’t talk about death here. Instead, Daniel talks about the lights of Paris in the dead of night, all excited: _you have to see it someday!_. He talks about the skatepark along the Han River he had once gone to in the past, about secret ramen runs in the middle of the night with Woojin or Jaehwan. He talks about dancing, and Seongwu lets him lift him up in his arms, swaying slightly to the quiet samba beats.

 

Daniel...Daniel is a puzzle and an enigma to Seongwu. Daniel, youthful optimism and naivete, idealism and a kind of childlike wonder to the world, who should never belong between the rows of bullets and loaded guns. Daniel, who shoots, simple, easy and fast, no enjoyment in the decadence of the kill, and sheds each death with soap and water and _lives._

 

***

 

Seongwu, for the most part, exists on sheer principle: he eats and drinks and sleeps, drifting between the worlds inside his head. His parents had deemed him one of the universe’s big fuck-ups in creation, the quiet, apathetic child who preferred the darkness of night and stared at the world with wide, empty eyes. He’d stumbled his way through most of his childhood, awkward and alone, his teenhood burying his head in endless books to fill the infernal void within. And then, as a university student in his senior year, in ossuaries and catacombs, fingers contemplating the femurs and skulls laid in neat rows in niches behind glass, wondering how the dry brittle bones would feel beneath his touch.

 

Seongwu doesn’t live, not the way Daniel does, in simple thrills and fine lines, in tomorrows and anticipation; Seongwu doesn’t have a direction, doesn’t need one, just aims and shoots, aims and shoots, again and again and again. By the tenth, twentieth, he stops counting altogether and lives in the moment. Death comes easy as breathing — or not breathing — and he lives in it, in corpses and carnage, all pleasure and pain and the thrill of the bullet exploding into locomotion as it rips through someone else’s chest.

 

He relishes the euphoria of the moment and loses himself.

 

***

 

There are quieter days, when business is slow and there is nothing much to do. Jisung gives them free reign to do whatever the hell they want and so they travel the world, living in luxury suites, rented apartments: Glasgow, Brisbane and Manhattan. A new city every day, everything fresh and different and new.

 

Jihoon takes him drifting in Tokyo; the lights of Tokyo bay are bright, and Jihoon hits the accelerator on the borrowed Viper, steering wheel tight in his hand until he lets go. Seongwu goes gambling with Jaehwan in Macau, counting craps and bombing ten thousand a night in chips at roulette and finds out first hand to never trust Jaehwan at the tables because Jaehwan has shit for luck.

 

Daniel brings him to Paris, as promised; they drink fine wines and eat fine foods, and in the night, Seongwu learns all the glistening planes of his broad back and long limbs, the way his cock curves in his palm as he fucks him open into the loveseat. He watches Daniel unravel beneath him, fingers scrambling for purchase, nails leaving long red streaks across his torso that make Seongwu hiss in pleasure, watches the way Daniel’s pink lips open into a moan, gasping, writhing, crying out his name as they both explode in streaks of white across the sheets.

 

They go at it again in Rome, Bangkok and then Moscow. The second time it happens, Seongwu is splayed out on the couch and panting; the third has Daniel pressed against the wall of some cupboard; and the fourth has Daniel’s arms around him, face buried in his hair, still in post-coital bliss as Daniel plays with his fingers and laughs.

 

Daniel becomes the one sole anomalous point, an errant high in the constancy of each gun shot.

 

It’s easy and natural, and between countries too plenty to count, Seongwu fucks him (gets fucked) on every surface they can find until the sun sets and rises again, and Daniel becomes a habit he’s too used to to kick. He runs forth in cycles of destruction: the death, the drugs and Daniel, pliant beneath him, red in the face, mouth parted and gasping. And Seongwu is intoxicated, every smile and laugh, chasing after the elusive high, one orgasm at a time. Ecstasy rushes through him like a tidal wave and Seongwu stands at the precipice and waits for it to consume him.

 

***

 

Vegas comes piggybacked after Singapore.

 

It’s hard to imagine a bigger desert oasis than the City of Sin. The temperature reads approximately 96 degrees, feeling too much like July rather than May, the air dry and arid and warm. Seongwu scrolls down the windows, tugging at his collar, head out to catch the light breeze as he exhales out puffs of blue smoke; Daniel is in the driver’s seat, turning up the radio a notch higher as Jaehwan’s complaints raise in volume. Minhyun frowns, cramped in the back seat as Woojin and Jihoon jostle for space.

 

It’s strange, being in this close proximity with each other where they’ve never had to before, but Jihoon had, regrettably, crashed the Audi in an alcohol induced spree the night before, and Woojin had blown the rest of the cash at the craps table last night. Seongwu doesn’t mind mostly, despite the fact that Daniel is a shittier driver than he is and Seongwu has to avoid getting concussed every time he goes over a hump. But he counts his blessings — at the very least, he’s not smushed up in the back in a tangle of limbs, and the front seat is where the vents are at, air-conditioner on full blast as he relaxes into his seat.

He watches the dusk, red dipping below the horizon, the harsh desert sun refracted through the windscreen, specks of sand and dust casting small inverted shadows. There are neon lights at every turn, bright and glitzy and bold. The Stardust is there, the Desert Inn and the Sahara, the Tropicana and the Aladdin; their names are written in obnoxious font, too large to miss.

 

Vegas is freedom, at a small price. It is what it is: the ultimate party without limits, an unending bacchanal of sex and sin. There’s a kind of fearlessness about Vegas, the slots, the wheels, the reckless carnality of a desert city of greased palms, where a twenty dollar bill buys approval, a ten and fifty buys a 24-hour high and eight hours of sex. Vegas, where all the days are night and where the nights are all hazy, blind hands groping, teasing mouths, chasing the high into tomorrow — Sunday is all but blurry shapes, amphetamine, methamphetamine itchy in his veins, Daniel hovering above him, blonde hair in his face, too close, too warm as they tease and fuck all through the night until they crash.

 

But the light of day brings a sort of startling clarity, his head throbbing and limbs sore, Daniel splayed across his bare chest, a body in the bath tub, and Jihoon shucking clothes into their luggages with shaking hands. Minhyun, crimson all over the front of his shirt, shouting over Jaehwan as they scrub away the remnants of the blood and bone from their fingers, Woojin pulling them up to their feet, and running, running, running… _fuck,_ he thinks _,_ fingers groping blindly for the car door as the sound of sirens explode behind them.

 

On Sunday, they murder a man in broad daylight, four bullets too many. His chest is pulverised, face purple and blue and bloated.

 

Seongwu doesn’t have a name, doesn’t remember the face; this is not a man in a grayscale snapshot in one of Sungwoon’s manila folders. There had been no price to pay, no vengeance to be sought, just a man on a road, drunk or high, gleefully shucking dollar bills into the back of his pocket, laughing a little too loudly before Jihoon had turned, annoyed, and shot him once in the chest. He hadn’t died then, only groaned, eyes wide and alert, mouth gurgling blood as Minhyun took his turn, Woojin and then Jaehwan, the Rugger tucked into his back pocket as he shot him in the face. They’d laughed as he writhed and begged, blood spilling all over the pavement until Seongwu had aimed, and shot, and he’d finally fallen over, dead at last.

 

Which leads them to where they are now, 50 miles out from the strip, key in ignition as Daniel sets the gear to drive; the engine roars to life and the car jerks forwards into motion. The sun sets, red like fire, and Seongwu thinks of the body in the bath tub, left to fester, thinks of the cold, sticky blood between his fingers, and realises this, this is nothing different at all.

 

***

 

The life of a contract killer is aimless and wandering. Their hands are bloody and stained with death. They leave destruction in their wake, burning flames of corpses doused in kerosene, the heat of burnt tyres on the asphalt. There are no tomorrows, no plans, and the instancy of the present is thrilling in some visceral way, like sitting in the backseat of a car and waiting to crash.

 

They don’t talk about Vegas, about how they’d lost themselves to illusions and mirages, the way Jihoon’s hands were red, Minhyun wringing his shirt clean and Jaehwan lighting it on fire, lighting it all on fire. Vegas, where they’d lost control, where it stopped being just a job, but murder, killing for pleasure, relishing in the kill.

 

It’s easier to pretend, so they live like this, with hands over their ears, as if life were some sort of charade. But blood follows them everywhere and Seongwu knows the truth: there is no true freedom, no escape. It’s an addiction, the devil’s dance over and over and over again. Shot after shot after shot —

 

_Bang._

 

(There is no remorse.)

 

***

 

Seoul remains unaltered when they return, muggy and warm and familiar, and yet, different.

 

He feels the subtle shifts in the growing rifts between them, all their slow jaggedy edges jarring and nervous; Minhyun shoots faster, Woojin more lethal and precise than ever, Jaehwan lets go and Jihoon drifts, like flotsam in the stream of the tide and dust between his fingers. Seongwu doesn’t move at all, doesn’t think, and lets himself sink into the predictability of the everyday: watching Daniel breathe, the rise and fall of his chest, head lolling back, all warm breaths and biting teeth, and the feeling of the gun, never empty, always loaded and pressed into the flesh of his thumb.

 

***

 

Summer, warm and sticky, easily festering bodies and bugs collecting at his windowsill, fades into the cool touch of autumn.

 

From his window, Seongwu sees the way the colors turn, green leaves to oranges and reds, the view of the last smiles of the year upon the ripened earth and all of its tawny leaves and withered hedges. There’s a draft outside, and the leaves collect, swirling around until the breeze carries them someplace new. He opens the window to touch the rain and breathe in its scent.

 

Autumn, of mellow mornings, coffee on the countertop, Daniel fucking him slowly, languidly, flesh against flesh, skin to skin. He watches the light wash onto his nose, the way the hazel of his eyes reflect in the light of the rising sun. He traces the small mole at the corner of his eye, the curve of his lips, soft underneath his fingertips. He lets Daniel kiss him, pulling him in deep, deeper, and Daniel laughs into his chest, wide open, stupid and goofy at once.

 

In the afternoons, Daniel makes him lunch, hot soups and noodles as Jihoon watches, juggling a couple of potatoes or pears, arms propped up so he’s pressed up against Seongwu. Minhyun mops circles around Jaehwan and Woojin and Jihoon play-fight, wrestling against the couch until Minhyun yells at them to stop. Seongwu stares at the scene with a frown trying to make sense of it all until Daniel’s fingers move to gently knead away the furrow in his brows.

 

“One day, we’ll build a house by the sea and we can go to Paris again, just you and me” he whispers.

 

Seongwu smiles back wryly, “maybe someday, we’ll run away.”

 

And it’s Daniel’s turn to frown.

 

“You’ve got to learn to live,” he says, tone light, but eyes serious.

 

And then with his palm pressed into Seongwu’s chin, mouth on his again, soft lips warm as the sun on his skin, they race each other into the horizon of the setting sun in smoke and asphalt-smelling dust and questions and answers all rolled into one.

 

***

 

Autumn is the season of poets and writers, who sing songs of its melancholy and fleeting beauty; autumn, the season of endings, shriveled bones and flesh, slowly turning to ashes and dust.

 

A gunshot rings in the air, like a peal of thunder before the storm —

 

November comes quickly, winter in cold greys and long cold nights, and red pooling like a flood across his feet.

 

***

 

The water splashes into the tub, filling it up too slowly. The rush of water, drops spattering on the sides, the harsh sound of water against metal; It echoes off the walls, drowning out the other sounds. Seongwu wonders why he’s washing these clothes, why he’s scrubbing the blood off his fingers, sink running red.

 

He needs soap, he thinks, _soap soap soap_ , hands scrubbing harder, as he scours the cabinets; but this is not the apartment back home, but a cheap motel in Seoul. He can’t find the soap, _where is the goddamned soap?_ He feels the panic well up in his chest, and there is _red_ , so much of it, beneath his fingernails, on his shirt, on his face. He scratches at his skin, fingernails dig into flesh as he tries to get it off. There’s a cacophony of voices yelling inside his head, too loud. The water is too loud. Everything is too loud. So he turns off the tap, stops the water running. He can feel his hands shake, mind swimming, head full of the water in the tub, in the sink. _Too much water_ , he thinks, and Seongwu is still scrubbing, mechanically scrubbing until his fingertips are numb, pins and needles crawling up his skin, racing up his arms like wildfire.

 

He feels the nausea, like a flower in his throat, it’s an itch inside his veins, like _dirt_ inside his mouth, suffocating. He’s suffocating, but he’s trying to breathe, mouth open and gasping; he feels his limbs give way, floor swimming beneath him. His heart clenches in his chest, aching; everything hurts, his eyes hurt, and why is he _crying_? He stares at the shirt in his hand, scrubbed raw, and he buries his face in the wet, soaking fabric. It’s Daniel’s shirt —

 

Seongwu remembers his fingers, pulling tighter against the black casing of the gun until they turn white, remembers the way Daniel had turned, laughter dying in his throat, a myriad of emotions flitting on his face, confusion, shock then _fear,_ how he closed his eyes, a small sad smile on his face, remembers how his own hands shook, barrell of the gun crooked, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,_ spilling out his lips like a prayer. He remembers, Daniel’s face against his own, the quiet _I love yous_ , whispered against his skin, and Seongwu can see it, feel it, can see in his eyes how his words are truth, but he has to do it, he has to do it, and Daniel is kissing him with fervent desperation, mouth warm against his own, before he gasps, the sound of the gun through the air like a two-sided knife and Daniel falls forwards like a paper doll into his arms, blood and entrails splattering against skin like rain, the rain of days past and memories and emotions he’s only begun to learn.

 

And Daniel is dead.

 

He lays there on the floor for a long while after that, breathing deeply. He raises his eyes and looks up at the horizon, watching the golden sun rise across the horizon, and the light washes against the pale, bloodied face of the man that loved him.

 

“It is done,” he whispers and lets out a breath and a puff of tobacco smoke, setting it all on fire, flames dancing against the walls, amber glow and heat on his skin and watches it all dissipate into nothingness.

 

***

 

Duplicity is something Jisung does and cannot stand for. A security risk, he’d said, arms folded in front of him, expression severe. There was Daniel’s face, the familiar curve of his lips partially obscured by a shelf, captured in a blurry grayscale snapshot in Jisung’s manila folder. But he wasn’t really Daniel, not the simple boy from Busan but a spy in the ranks, a police officer, insidious and lethal, his real name on the folder in bolded print **Kang Eui Geon** like a death sentence.

 

Seongwu had laughed, feeling stupid, thinking back about the moments in the summer, the falling light of fall, questioning everything and wondering why it stings so much like anger and betrayal. Jisung smiled, a shark-like expression on his face, pressed the Glock in his hand, and told him to shoot.

 

(He’d shot straight — straight through his own heart.)

 

***

 

His world comes apart, thread by thread until he's bare.

 

Seongwu doesn’t know where things begin or end, the warm sunny days interspersed like fine grains of sand between memories of that cold wintry night. Death, life, there’s no thrill to this game, only his hands shaking, tinged with desperation, barrel of the gun tight in his fingers like it’s the only thing he can hold on to, like the only thing he has left.

 

With every gun shot, every pull of the trigger, Seongwu lingers in reflections of Daniel’s sad, mournful eyes, and the warmth of Daniel’s blood against his fingers. Guilt, he feels it in every death, he can feel the ricochet of the bullet, shredding through bone and rib and heart at once; and pain, in his bones, his chest,  _Daniel Daniel Daniel_ , ricocheting like bullets in his head instead, Daniel and his laugh, his kiss, his arms around him as the light had gone out in his eyes. And Seongwu lies there, with eyes bloodshot, staring at the empty space on his bed until dawn comes again, his mind full of _what ifs_ , his heart yearning, waiting for something that it can no longer want or have because Daniel is cold and dead and gone, Daniel who’d loved him, and maybe, maybe Seongwu had loved him too.

 

***

 

He lets go.

 

***

 

“What if there is no moral?” Seongwu asks the sky.

 

But there are no answers, sky stretching bright and blue beyond the horizon, the sun glaring and warm against his skin. And he rams his foot down on the accelerator and feels the Beetle fly.

 

Gravity pauses, earth slipping beneath his feet until all that remains is the ocean and the echoing roar of water into his ears. He sinks into the endless grey, and lets it fill him.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> For the folks at Ongcord, who served as my bouncing board of ideas and helped with tough bits. 
> 
> This was harder to write than I thought? What started out as a drabble ended up becoming this monstrosity. Also, I have no knowledge about drifting or actual contract killers other than what's in the movies. + spelling Seongwu still trips me up istg but what ong wants he will get. 
> 
> Some fun facts/outtakes:  
> \- Seongwu's first kill is Sewoon  
> \- After the end of the fic, Jisung recruits a new member: Jinyoung  
> \- Is Daniel really a spy? Hmm.  
> \- Also, choice of the word 'fag' is not meant to be derogatory in any way; in the UK, it's slang for cigarette
> 
> fic related asks at: [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/doxies)  
> or tweet me at: [twitter @825osw](https://twitter.com/825osw)


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